Indiegogo Review 2019

Welcome to our Indiegogo review. The goal of this article is to provide you an overview of the Indiegogo platform. We will take a look at both the good and the bad about the crowdfunding site. This way, you can decide if it’s the best platform for your cause.

What is Indiegogo?

Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform on which users can raise their funds from backers. They can also raise money to start up their small businesses. When they start a campaign, they choose from a pre-made list of categories to help them categorize the cause.

The main categories are Tech and Innovation, as well as Creative Works and Community Projects. Underneath these you will find sub-categories too-Community Projects, for instance, includes Human Rights, Education, and Wellness.

Investing for Small Business

In essence, the backers are basically something of a venture capitalist, investors purchasing a stake in your company’s up and coming success. You can raise up to 1 Million USD with this platform for this cause.

InDemand

Indiegogo offers a service called InDemand, which helps you raise funds on a continuous basis. You have no fixed fundraising goals. If your initial campaign was hosted on Indiegogo, your original page stays up and is used as a factor to validate your fundraising project.

How to Start A Project?

You don’t have to have a set of qualifications to get started. You do have to be over 18 to start one. Or, you can be between 13 and 17. And then you will be able to get a parent to sign off on the Terms and Conditions for you. Aside from this, you cannot raise money for a bad or ineligible cause. Like, raising money so you can invest, items having to do with drugs or drug use, or offer perks that are otherwise invalid. Just don’t offer stuff that’s questionable, okay?

How You Will Pay

Here’s the rundown on the fees you pay with Indiegogo, as well as some more helpful info on their funding setup.● Your funding duration is 60 days● 5% fee for Creative Projects● 5% fee for InDemand Projects● Processing fee of 3% plus .30 cents of every pledge

You will notice they use Stripe as their processor for credit card payments. You cannot use PayPal any longer. If you have started a Fixed campaign for crowdfunding, that does not meet the money goals, all contributions are refunded, and no fees are taken from you.

When you launch a fundraising effort for charity through their Generosity name, the 5% fee on contributions raised will be waived. And, this makes it a great option for a person hoping to pay off their medical bills or some dental care for less fortunate kids. Indiegogo’s Generosity is quite nice, but for projects that are not charitable not paying a platform fee is nice. CrowdfundingBum and some others do not charge a platform fee, which is great for those who already are operating on a shoestring budget.

Perks and Such

You can offer perks to your backers too. If you do this, it will get you over 100% more backers than you would by NOT offering one. With Indiegogo, you don’t have to do this, but you really should so you can get more backers. There are 20 levels of perks you can offer to the backers, based upon how much they contribute to your cause.

One thing to keep in mind is that these perks should be written in such a way that gets them noticed. If you are not a strong writer, you will have to ask a member of your family or friend to do a favor for you or hire a freelancer-both of which are not exactly easy to do; the former making you feel like you’re intruding and the latter costing some dollars. Some platforms, like CrowdfundingBum, have expert writers on hand that can make your cause really POP.

The way in which these trained writers go about their business makes your campaign look like the only campaign. So, it is a nice alternative if you’re not such a strong writer. They can do this for business projects too. Busy entrepreneurs simply do not have the time to be worrying about minutiae like grammar, spelling or other things that go into writing a great description. In the CrowdfundingBum v. Kickstarter realm, this thing CrowdfundingBum does is just great.

Built in backers exist upon the CrowdfundingBum platform. So, if you just want to alleviate worries about backers in general, consider Crowdfunding Bum as an Indiegogo alternative.

How to Apply

Indiegogo is pretty versatile when it comes to their platform and are more flexible than some others like Kickstarter. Approval is instant on this platform, and you do not have to wait for your OK to come through. Some who got suspended on Kickstarter moved over to Indiegogo and had better luck over there.

The approval does NOT apply to the small business or equity campaigns, however. When investing is involved, the project has to be approved first to make sure it is appropriate.

Customer Service/Support

The Indiegogo Customer Service is pretty good. The help section is loaded with good information for newcomers and veterans alike, and you can also use the contact form to get in touch with a rep if you need to. The responsiveness of the Indiegogo customer service reps seems to be superior to others in the industry, so that’s definitely a plus.

Summing It Up

Certainly, there are other crowdfunding platforms you can use to get your project off the ground, but Indiegogo really does a good thing when it comes to helping get funds in order for a charitable or special cause. We like that fees aren’t deducted for its InDemand service but do find that the fees you pay can really take a bite out of your bottom line.

There is also less traffic brought to the site than others. However, we do find that this platform is a nice place for other sites that may not allow what it is you’re funding-so it definitely has a place in the crowdfunding world.

Final thoughts.

Before you go running off to IndieGoGo, we hope you stick around a while to find out more about all that Crowdfunding Bum has to offer. You will find ample reasons to choose us as your funding source.